


Ashes to Ashes

by prieta



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Lots of Angst, M/M, Meaningless Suffering, PTSD, Really unhealthy relationships, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Stockholm Syndrome, Unnecessarily Confusing, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:36:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prieta/pseuds/prieta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though the mind might forget the body remembers all its wounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes to Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Me and this fic have issues, I am totally aware.  
> Hannibal has basically turned into one big Jesus-symbol, Will is passive and characterless as fuck, there's religious overtones in every other sentence I don't know how that happened, my punctuation has gone to shit, I don't think any of my tenses were ever right to begin with much less cohesive, half of the passages were super rushed because I basically needed to fill in random plot holes as quickly as possible because this monster of a...thing has been basically dogging me through all of AP-testing month. IDK maybe I'll get guilty enough to come back and fix it probably not.
> 
> Dedicated to the beautiful and wonderful Amy, if she'll have it.

IIIIII

“ _And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.” –Matthew 5:29_

IIIIII

 

Will opens his eyes.

It's night. A warm, cloudless autumn night, the residual heat of the day dissipated, curling slightly at the edges, a gentler beast. Its breath a cool whispering wind flitting through the trees, lifts the leaves in their branches with a gentle rasp, ruffles through his hair gently.

The stag plants its hooves apart, arches its neck back and considers Will and his resting place on the floor from across the clearing. He cranes his neck, opens his mouth, but it shakes its great head, stamps its foot once and bounds off before he can say anything. Disappearing into the night evaporating like mist. Like a fading dream. Will lets his head fall back on the blanket of leaves, winces at the dry crunch, the dull sting.

It's night, and the ice-edged stars wheel overhead. Andromeda, Aries, Perseus, Pisces. _If only_ , he thinks, and a sudden, great well of grief swells over him, like being smothered in a blanket. _Hanni-_

IIIIII 

 

Alana had been the first one to arrive. Came rushing into the hospital room, clothes slightly more askew than proper, eyes too carefully made up suggesting something amiss. 

"Oh, Will," her voice quavers once with something approaching heartbreak, reaches out a hand to his gauze-wrapped head but aborts halfway across, fingers quivering suspended in mid-air. "What happened?"

 ** _He_** _happened_ , Will thinks, but he opens his mouth, has to fight the words through his abused throat, says, "I don't know.”

 

IIIIII

 

"...retrograde amnesia. Usually sustained by trauma of the physical kind, but occasionally it can also be caused by psychological trauma," the doctor smiles at him genially, sets her hand back down dangerously close to his on the bed. An open invitation, the physical representation of bridging boundaries both physical and mental. Mental Bereavement Counseling 101. Will resists the urge to grimace. His eyes dart skittishly to the side, focus on the facing wall painted a tacky pastiche.

"William," here she leans in closer, lowers her voice in mock-sympathy, hand inching that much closer, cornering the poor feral animal. "You know you can talk about anything with me."

Her eyes are green, he knows, from the single quick glance he'd taken of her face. Green eyes, long blonde hair beginning to gray, low thread count shirt, marriage ring she habitually rubbed her fingers across as if to reassure herself it was still there. Her hands when she'd grabbed his in greeting had been soft, civilian, perhaps beginning to melt in age. Some powdered, pressed, and flowered scent, and it had been wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Will deflects his gaze to the other side of the room, shifts restlessly and jerks his hand away two degrees too abruptly to be considered socially acceptable. The flowers on the nightstand are the only red things in the blue-tainted room. They gleam vibrantly, the color of open wounds, and Will imagines the blood still crawling down his neck, sneaking into the hem of his shirt damp and a warm like a lover's fingers. The way Hannibal had smiled, skimmed his hands down Will's chest along the path his fingers had carved. _Lovely_ , he'd said, his smile a bright, sharp thing.

“William?” The lines between her brows deepen unattractively when she frowns. The meat of her arms have at some point acquired the habit of spreading out when pressed against a surface. How Hannibal would have seen her- as a creature like any other. Suffused in water, her cells soaked in interstitial fluid. Unappealingly ordinary. All animals are the same when you peel apart the skin, pry open the skull.                    

Will licks his lips. “Yes, of course,” he says, his eyes trained on the negative space between her shoulder and her earlobe. His voice rasps. It will for a while. It might always. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been feeling myself lately.”

She smiles, frown lines disappearing shifting into new ones, pleased by the perceived progress. “Of course, perfectly understandable. Tell me…”

 

IIIIII

 

The first and only time Jack visits Will while is in the hospital he spends the first few minutes pacing the length of the room before folding himself into the uncomfortable waiting chair. An interesting juxtaposition: the great bear of a man, eats serial killers for breakfast, dwarfs the puny chair, his knees bend in a way that must be uncomfortable yet he resolutely leans forward. His searching gaze focused on Will’s face like a laser beam.

“Are you doing all right,” he asks. It isn’t a question.

Will clears his throat with a cough, has to swallow a few times before he can talk. If Jack notices he doesn’t comment. “Given…the circumstances, I would imagine I could be a lot worse.”

“Not going to apologize for what I did.”  There are circles under Jack’s eyes; they haven’t faded since the funeral and he had stood silent vigil over the headstone for hours afterwards, head bowed and fingers clenched so hard his nails drew blood which Katz had to patch up later.

“Never expected you to.”

Jack’s gaze is famous among the bureau- the silence that has wordlessly broken a thousand cold-blooded killers. He considers Will for one long minute, and Will resists the urge to fidget like a school-child, Jack has always had an incredibly ruthless talent for making other people feel guilty for his own unreasonableness.           

“I’ll see what I can do about getting you cleared to leave and back to work. Rest up,” he says, finally, apparently satisfied, unfolds himself from his chair, nods a quick, perfunctory notion.

 

IIIII

 

Maybe a day after Jack visits Will is cleared from intensive care, moved to a different room. It is quieter; fewer nurses, less equipment and for that Will is grateful. He vaguely anticipates his imminent release, if only to see his dogs.

“It’s not right,” Alana argues hotly, twisting the sheets in her hands with a vindictive jerk. “Jack’s interfering with your recovery.”

“He thinks I’m ready,” Will says, placatingly, watching with mild surprise as she continues aggressively unloading an armory of clothing- there’s a fresh bouquet of flowers resting on his nightstand, a painting of corgis set up front and center on the opposite wall, some sort of Incan blanket-shawl tossed carelessly over his bedside charts- while still talking in rapid-fire, clearly agitated on his behalf.

“What he thinks and what’s right are not the same thing. Sometimes worlds apart. This is one of those times.” Another bag, this one filled with books. Her shirt rucks up as she leans down, sorting through them, shows a sliver of pale, creamy skin at the small of her back. Before, Will had idolized that exact skin, coveted like a priceless artifact. He forces himself to turn his head. It doesn’t matter anymore.

“I’m all right,” he says.                                                 

Alana whirls, arms full of 2012’s bestsellers. Her livewire gaze seeks his out, holds it for one breathless movement. “Are you really? All right?” The breathtaking blue of them is just as stunning as before, a faint wavering in her voice under all that vigor and energy.

Will does his best to meet her eyes, nod with certainty. Soothe, somehow.

“Okay,” she is the one to break eye contact. Quieter, she sets the book gently down on his bedside, her lips still quirked a little to the side. It is the first time in a long time that Will wishes things were different, that he could have remained as he was. “Okay.”

 

IIIII

 

The stag leans over him so close he can feel the cool whuff of its breath ruffling the curls of his bangs. It is a regal creature, the delicate little movements that bely a living breathing thing; the quiver of its nostrils, the tender rise and fall of its great chest, the dusky streaks in its fur.

It regards him carefully. Behind those dark pupils whirl constellations, whole worlds, stars and galaxies and nebulous acres of dust.

Will reaches out a hand. “Wait,” he begins but it breaks eye contact with a turn of its head, pulling away from his fingertips. Something mournful in the angle of its great head as it sweeps away plods back into the night, fading like dew in the dawn and all he is left with the action potential of contact twinging in the tips of his fingers and an ache in his throat thick a tightening noose.

 

IIIIII

 

"-quite interesting," Hannibal comments, offhanded, hands absently swirling the wine in his glass. They are sitting across from each other, separated by a table plied with the accouterments of beauty. Candles glow brightly, the cutlery gleams like surgeon's instruments- it is entirely inappropriate. Probably breaks at least three unspoken rules about boundaries. Doctor-mental-case confidentiality.

"Talk to a landlocked man about the sea and he will describe for you the smell of salt in the air, the cry of gulls, the living beauty of the mother ocean," as he speaks he plucks up his fork and knife, spears into the garnish on his plate with surgical precision- a captain at his helm. "But if, say, you were to speak to a man who lives on the coast, you will hear only about stench of dead fish in the air. The ghastly cold winters. The terrible winds."

"So- what?" Will replies, "Life is what you make of it?"

"Perhaps, if you desire to think in such platitudes," Hannibal smiles just a quick careless lift to one side of his mouth. A fleeting dash of warmth steeling through the curve of his lips. His eyes darkened by the fire dance in the dark. They gleam auburn, an unholy kind of loveliness, and Will can't help himself feels like a moth caught in the thrall of a flame.

"Perhaps it shows that what you see and feel have no real bearings on what actually exists." He spears a bit of flesh, expertly cut, on his knife and offers it to Will. Will closes his eyes, opens his mouth in acceptance. The meat is warm and loamy, thicker than any animal he'd eaten before, and his teeth clink gently around the hard steel of the knife.

 

IIIII

 

The dogs mill about his heels worriedly, and he lets one hand drop, rapping gently at a flank, but the warm, live feel of it brings him no comfort. His head aches despite the tumbler of whiskey he has downed. He rubs his burning eyelids, and the stag whuffs softly.

“Why are you still here?” He demands, finally, but, it shakes its head placidly, its dark eyes gentle through the ruined planes of its rotting face.

 Chaz nudges at his hand worriedly, but he doesn’t move his gaze away from the figure in front of him. He watches broodingly the disintegrating mass of its antlers as they melt slowly onto the floor pooling viscous, black as coagulated blood, the drip of them a metronome matching the slow, steady crawl of his grandfather clock.

 

IIIIII

 

Will picks up a request form to visit the crime scene the week he is cleared to return home. He isn’t needed for police work- psych had deemed him too emotionally invested- the irony- to be of any use in this case, but Alana stops by his house, slips the verified forms into his mailbox. Crumpled it in one corner where she’d gripped it too hard, probably stood in front of his gate for minutes on end, biting her lip like she did whenever she was conflicted.

The police tape on the door is bright and garish, ugly enough he imagines the small, offended curl of Hannibal’s lips. It breaks apart with a quiet _snick_ as he enters.

Fittingly, they’d killed him while he was in the kitchen, presiding over his throne. One shot clean as a hole puncher, cookie-cutter edges; they’d brought out the big dogs for the Chesapeake Ripper, not a low-level police and his pistol but a sniper perched in the trees, pushed a bullet dead-center between his eyes.

Will had been conscious for the tail-end of it, imprinted into his mind a flashbulb memory of Hannibal hanging suspended in mid-air before dropping to the floor, strings cut. The near-perfect arc of the arterial spray, the limp surprise on his face.

Crime Scene had come in and drawn him a chalk outline when they took the body, the trio of them crowded around Hannibal as efficient as ever but faces stiff, no jokes or snippy comments. Will could swear it was on purpose how long they’d waited before they came in. By then Hannibal was already going cold, but Will still sat rooted to the spot on the other side of the room, frozen like the coward he was.

He’d looked-peaceful. The bullet-hole so clean Will imagines he could have seen clear through to the floor. The lewd flush of colors crawling down the sides of his forehead, matting into his hair, the halo of blood spreading across the immaculate floor.

His fingers had convulsed gripping re-gripping, nails dug into the grout for a shuddering second before slacking. His eyes fluttered once but stayed open, and they tipped upward towards the ceiling. The depths of them gleamed brighter now in death than ever. The plane of his brows, sapped of color, looked clean and smooth, snowy against the rich, obscene swell of all that blood. Unmarred. Virginal. At peace.

Only Hannibal’s outline remains now. An afterimage, like when Will was a kid and engaged in stupid boyhood dares, staring contests at the sun. The ghosts of a thousand suns rioted behind his eyes whenever he closed them, and he walked into things for the rest of the day. The chalk traces the curve of his legs spread haphazardly, bare approximation of how his arms had been all akimbo, awkward angles seemingly boneless. Not a trace of discomfort in his face, though. The shadow of dried blood pooled around the outline of his head is the only real part of Hannibal left.

 

IIIIII

Like a ghost the stag rises again. It steps daintily out of the pooling afternoon shadow, face half-melted now, dripping all over the floor like an absurd, fleshy candle. Will would have laughed if he felt like it, if he felt less like crying. He fingers the bottle of pills he'd picked up on his way home from Hannibal's house, resists the urge to flinch at the quiet clatter of its hooves over the broken and scattered heaps on his floor.

His dogs whine and scramble away from their beds as the stag delicately elbows its way through, and he registers them with a dull jolt of surprise- and guilt. How long since he'd-? Will closes his eyes, suddenly too tired to flee even as it looms over him in the dark.

"You're back. Jesus Christ- you're." Something fragile in the flecks of teeth that peak out from behind its shredded gums, white and clean, tender and new.

"I'll never get rid of you will I, you." He'd tried; mouse traps, bought a lock for his door, then two, then more, absurd amounts of bug paper that come out clean despite the muck he's watching pool again over his carpet.

"You're like a damn wraith," Will presses his fist to his mouth, "what." 

 

 

IIIIII

 

The bag lands on his kitchen table with a soft whump, sliding a few centimeters before coming to a rest just off-center of his kitchen table.

“Brought you something,” Katz adds unnecessarily, already meandering into his kitchen, swinging back a chair with a tilt of her wrists. Will doesn’t bother to respond, shuffles quickly over to shut the harsh stream of incoming afternoon sun.

“Like what you did to this place- seriously, when’d you last open a window,” she grimaces a little, rocking back on her conquered chair.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect company,” Will offers, returning to his kitchen to watch her shuffling the papers on his table with quick efficient flicks of her eyes. _Cur_ , Hannibal hisses into his ear, but he merely sidesteps her spread ankles to reaching the pain medication he’d taken to stashing in his kitchen cabinets.

Katz watches him swallow his pills with her dark, sharp gaze, her dissecting mind no doubt speeding into overtime. With a slow, exaggerated motion, she pushes the bag closer to him and he obliges her. Will opens the top, is maybe rather bemused to find that it is a wrap, brazenly and unapologetically pork. Out of the corner of his eyes he watches the slow, foxy lift of the corners of her mouth, her eyebrows cocked in question.

“Too soon?” She asks, brows still raised. And Will has to smile a little at that, turns his back to grab the plates before she can see it.

He’s setting the dishes on the table when she deigns to speak again, gaze landing on his face from where it had been scanning the cobweb dusted corners. “Alana’s orders not to bother you- something about centering or soul-searching or something,” she spins her fork lazily, letting it catch the muted light from the closed windows, shoulders loose and relaxed. “But you know I figure too much silence can be just as bad as too little. Like my grandma who locked herself away to mourn or whatever- went batshit.”

“You think I’m batshit?”

“No. Maybe. Not yet,” she flicks the fork upright with a twist of her index finger, deft surgeon’s hands. “But I think you’re in a dark place, again, Graham. And your usual lifeboat is what put you here. Say,”  she nods her head to the dishes on the floor. “What happened to Chaz? There are only 8 bowls.”

Dread like ice lances down his spine, and Will tenses. _Mongrel, ingrate, bitch_ , Hannibal spits, his lips curled in cold rage. The frigid feel like he’s still gripping the fragments of the plate, like he’s gripping onto the broken edges of the world again. His fingers tighten on his fork.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he has to force himself to keep from gritting his teeth, his breathing coming in faster.

“Yeah you do, Graham.” She’s watching him again, medical-grade eyes, lids slitted slightly eyebrows drawn together. Observing. “You do. You know you do.” It’d be easy to leap up, _easy_ , hisses Hannibal, to leap up, drive the sharp tines into her soft throat, claw off that vulpine smirk with his nails his teeth if he has to.

“I said- I don’t.” His chest beginning to shake ever so finely, maybe he leaps out of his chair, upsets the cutlery which clatters on the floor ringing like bells. She stays sitting, head cocked a little to the side.

“Graham?” Her voice tempered with concern, her ankles close together, she shifts backwards ever so slightly.

“Out. Get out.”

“Graham-“

“ _Out_.” His palms slam onto the table hard enough to rattle the glasses. Katz doesn’t jump but her shoulders tense, line up like drawing a string through her spine.

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Katz.” _Easy, easy_ and he leans in close enough his jaws ache to see the pulse fluttering ever so slowly impossibly close to her neck. “You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed.”                                     

Slowly, placatingly, she gets out of her chair, hands raised in acquiescence. “Dark places, Graham,” she reminds him, eyes narrowed stops for one last moment to flicker over the scene- the dank of the room, the mail piled on the table, no sound or sight of dogs, Will standing there shaking eyes drilled into the opposing wall. Quivering. She shakes her head and opens the door, slips out.

Will turns with shaking hands to fall onto her vacated chair, all the rage sapped out of him, Hannibal receding to the corner like the tide disappearing. He presses his eye-sockets into the palms of his head, wonders when the medication will kick in.

 

IIIIII

 

He hasn’t slept in a while- perhaps a very long while, though he’s basically stopped bothering to keep count. Will wanders through his living room- such a strangely simple process now that there are no bodies to avoid, no paws to stumble past, the water dishes stacked up mouldering in the far corner.

His dogs are gone. Food had stopped appearing in their dishes, and maybe they turned again to the forest for rats and mice. Maybe they had wandered into the shadow of alleys and forgotten their way back. Maybe they’d been eaten. Maybe they ate something they shouldn’t have. It doesn’t matter.

Winston pads through the living room and hops onto the couch, bumps his head against Will’s elbow until he raises his arm and curls it around his neck. He’s shivering under the rough coat of his fur, whines a low, heartbroken sound.

“I’m sorry,” Will says. Winston closes his eyes, hunkers in close.

 

IIIIII

 

Gravel gnaws at the sole of his feet as he walks. Vaguely he registers the bite of it, the constant dull ache quietly escalating. The burn of cold air presses into his lungs, the long perpetual blackness of the road ahead of him and behind him padding on near-silent feet hooves clack in rhythm.

 

IIIIII

 

“’And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.’*” Hannibal smiles, licks his teeth in a slow, obscene motion. The corners of his mouth are stained a fragile pink.

The ruts of blood she had trailed behind herself, dragging herself away on broken arms and broken legs, whimpering in pain. They glow darkly on the floor, a path leading nowhere.

 

IIIIII

 

Some time in the night, perhaps the day, perhaps never, Will is jolted from his daze to the sound of the dog-door closing shut with a quiet clack. Such a quiet, inconsequential sound repeated thousands of times before but it reverberates in the suddenly empty room. The chill is much more pronounced now, the yawning dark of it a mouth with teeth. Will crawls his way off the couch, stumbles up the stairs- nearly gives himself a concussion missing a stair- to get more blankets.

 

IIIIII

 

“Why are you doing this,” he begs. “Why are you still here? I- you-can’t stay here anymore. Please."

"Please. You’re gone and you need to leave, I-why-”

 

IIIIII

 

Hobbe’s are eyes trained on his back and he’s covered up to the elbow in blood.

“ _See_?” His voice rasps, eyes bright and feverish, pale as glass pupils milky. His grins, sharp as knives. “ _See?”_

 

IIIIII

 

“Please,” begs Abigail, dilated eyes black holes surrounded by a bare corona of light. 

“Please,” whispers the woman on the floor. The gaping mouths of her eyes bleeding vitreous fluid pouring down the slopes of her cheekbones, the ruined beauty of her eyelashes flutter convulsively in the air. Blood and gel splatter onto the floor with sickening regularity as she crawls toward him belly-down like the serpent of myth.

 

IIIIII

 

“Compassion is a social construct. Piety, altruism. Kindness.” Hannibal in the gloom of the room leans over him, his hair slipping from behind his ears slides across his brows and catches in his eyelashes. “Show me a selfless man and I will show you a liar.”

Will shudders. The long meandering path of those killer’s hands raises gooseflesh along his ribcage, and the sides of his throat ache in anticipation. Though the mind might forget the body remembers all its wounds.

“In truth, there can be no such thing as a selfless act,” his breath warm and sweet ghosts across Will’s collarbone as he speaks. “All decisions stem from the self, and as such all motivations, too, stem from internal desires.”

The slats of the blinds crawl across Hannibal’s face, the milky mid-afternoon sun refracting in the blonde strands of his hair as Hannibal draws himself back up, an impromptu crown blooming to life a watercolor in motion as his fingers close gently around Will’s neck.

 

IIIIII

 

 _God_ , he thinks, _god, no more, please, god_. But the shadows don’t stop, crawling out of the depths to wrap around his throat with a choking grip. In the back of his head Hannibal hums comfortingly, rakes his nails down the sides of his ribs. The hard burn of it makes him double up in agony, sweat dripping cold down the length of his nose he’s melting like candle wax, burning up and out a conflagration, an inundation, a funeral pyre black and red like the hollow chatter of blood in his veins, the ugly scraping of his blood vessels.

 _He’s almost here_ , Hannibal promises, licks at the lids of his closed eyes gently, and Will shudders harder.

From two rooms down, the quiet click of his tumblers unlocking travel through the air like sliding through water, the dull reverberating ache of sound, the sudden burning infusion of light, Hannibal's croons of glee along with the sudden crescendo of sound in his veins drowning out all else Hannibal’s joy lancing spears through his lungs exquisite agony, and he rises to his feet.

 

IIIII

 

Will scrambles to lift himself, his hands so slick with blood he almost slips. Alana stares back at him face frozen in horror. The blood in her hair is not beautiful as it had been on Hannibal; it is ugly and garish. There might have been tears in the damp corners of her eyes. The cupid’s bow of her upper lip before so soft and mobile, lovely, now turned to stone. She too was ultimately a thing of flesh. No matter how it looks like you or talks like you it, it can be nothing but a flawed mirror. The blood on his hands is rapidly cooling, stealing his warmth as it evaporates.

“Do you know why,” he addresses her terrified eyes, his voice high and shaky as if he were shouting from a great height, “we find killing other humans appalling?”

His ears ache, the gaping mouth of her throat makes his jaws constrict- his voice has been raw since the hospital and it’s never healed. “Because we are selfish. We desire to see ourselves as more than material objects, and we- project our desires onto others. Calling it sympathy.”

No response, as expected. Her eyes glassy, Hobbe’s eyes Abigail’s, stare back at him accusingly.

“ _See?”_ The smell of blood and death in this room is nauseating. When he was in 6 th grade his science class visited a farm, one of those old family farms that still processed their own meat sometimes. He hadn’t been able to eat pork for half a year afterwards- the squealing of the sow as she was dragged away some primitive part of her had sensed the danger. He’d snuck off from the tour, peaked in through the blinds- the knife a silver streak, the way the skin curled away from the wound in a lopsided grimace, the curdled milk of subcutaneous fat and lymph fluid how she turned limp in their arms, the same stench of terror in that room as in this one. He’d turned around and vomited up his sandwich all over the grass.

 He can’t stay here. Will stumbles over the awning on his way out, scrapes his knee as he flees for the stairs.

 

IIIIII

 

Through the dead yard and across the road his feet carry him aimlessly. And of course, he ends up in the forest.

Will staggers through the rows of brittle trees, feet crunching on the carpet of leaves like walking on broken glass. He's shaking, his head is jerking on his neck like a live thing caught, and his knees tremble once before they give out entirely and he catches himself on a nearby tree, smearing blood across it, a bright garish hand-print red like an offering, the snake’s apple.

Autumn is gone, and winter is approaching sweeping through the forest. The birds have disappeared, the trees have gone dormant. They are chill, emanating a dull afterimage of frost which Will can feel where his cheeks are pressed into the wood.

"Please," he whispers, pushes his forehead into the rough bark hard enough he can feel it bite into skin. "Please." The warm trickle of blood is a benediction, curving down across his eyes steeling down his cheeks. The way Hannibal had looked, too, arranged on his kitchen floor, the blood like rich drapings spread across the white tiles. The thin, straight sweep of his eyelashes startingly girlish and slightly dewy, the hallowed concave of his jaw. Before, the heat of him had been warm and vital, hands gentle hands skimming lovingly across his offerings and soft on Will's skin those first few times, too, such reverence.

"Hannibal. Hannibal, please, Hannibal," Will pleads, but he is not there. There is no stag. There are no gods. Will is alone in the forest, a godless land the wind steeling through the leaves whispering mournfully of warmer climes.

It is night. The leafless trees arch upwards, their hands meeting in the air heads bent as if in prayer, an austere ageless grief. Eons of waiting, endless cycles. Winter has come and they again trade their bright baubles for mourner's clothes. Ash to Lent, punishment and absolution. And the stars. Glimmering, distant gods. Cut through the dark of the night like bullet holes in reverse. Beautiful.

 

IIIIII

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> *Genesis 3:14  
> don't judge me


End file.
